leres@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Craig Leres) (10/23/86)
Obviously, there were several pieces of information I should have included in my first posting. I hope the following helps. Conquest is a multi-player real-time screen-oriented space war game. It is based on the game called "empire" on the PLATO computer system. It runs on virtually any kind of cursor addressable crt. It was co-authored by Jef Poskanzer. Since Conquest requires some technique for sharing memory between processes, it currently only runs under VAX/VMS. Maybe one day someone will port it to a Unix system that supports this. The first version of Conquest was released in September of 1983. It is available as a separate DECUS library submission (called VAX-72). It is also available on the Fall 1983 Las Vegas VAX symposium tape (called V-SP-23) and the 1986/1987 VAX library tape 2 (called VAX-LIB-2). This first version of Conquest will run on VAX/VMS version 3.3 and up. The second version of Conquest is on the 1986 San Francisco VAX symposium tape. As mentioned before, this release contains complete Ratfor source. It runs on VAX/VMS version 4.4. (It may run on older systems, but this hasn't been tested.) I doubt very much that many people have a copy of this tape yet. However, there is a tape distribution system and I am sure that the number of copies is growing exponentially. As I understand it, you should contact your nearest DECUS LUG (local users group) to get a copy. (I'm exactly not sure how one goes about doing this.) If you just can't wait and are willing to pay the media charge, you can contact DECUS directly and ask how to go about getting the 1986 San Francisco VAX symposium tape: DECUS Order Processing 219 Boston Post Road, BP02 Marlboro, MA 01752 (617) 480-3419 I have no idea if DECUS is offering the San Francisco VAX symposium tape yet; I do know that DECUS charges about $50 for library submissions and $160 for symposium tapes. I think the tapes are 600 and 2400 foot, 1600 BPI. I'm not willing to get involved in the distribution of this game, so please don't ask. One main reason we submitted Conquest to DECUS was to avoid this hassle. (I think it's bad enough that I used this network to announce its availability...) Craig